The next morning at breakfast he read the press headings.
“The old Garrison homestead destroyed by fire, a total loss, on account of Mr. Garrison’s neglect to renew the insurance. Fire caused by a cigarette or cigar stump thrown carelessly from one of the tall adjacent buildings. The house was a tinder box. Fortunately, the family had moved to their palatial residence on Park Avenue.”
He marked the notices with red pencil, and sent them up on his wife’s breakfast tray. He heard the maid knocking, and Julie’s voice saying “Come in.” He could see her opening the papers, reading the marked lines; there was a loud cry and a heavy fall; he went up quickly. She was lying on the floor rigid, the paper clutched in her hand; it was impossible to bring her to. He telephoned for Dr. McClaren, who came at once. Floyd told him about the fire in a few words.
“It must have been a great shock to her,” said the doctor.
“I don’t know,” answered Floyd. The doctor looked at him curiously, then went into Julie’s room.
He brought her to, insisted on her resting that day in bed, and said to Floyd, “She’ll be all right. There’s no cause for worry; I’ve seen her like that before.”
Julie believed with all her superstitious, secretive soul, that her hair turning white had been a punishment for giving in to her suppressed passion for Martin; and last night in that very hour of burning joy their house was in flames. “What did it mean? What was that unseen revengeful Power preparing for her?—perhaps another blow, a physical deformity?”
With a cry of terrible fear, she sprang out of bed, locked the door, stood before the long mirror examining herself closely, not like a beautiful woman exulting over her reflected beauty, but with the fear of a guilty soul seeking the brand of further punishment. “What now? What now?” Her body was spotless, like white marble with a delicate tracery of blue veins. She gave a long sigh of relief.
The reporters besieged the house. Floyd had the agony of seeing himself, his wife, his child in every newspaper. The weeklies had colored prints of the beautiful Mrs. Garrison. “She might have stepped out of a picture,” “a living Greuze,” “the grace of a French Dame de Salon,” “the Art of Conversation lives again”—then the Russian players arrived.
Julie did not get over the shock. Her nerves, always abnormal, snapped; she sank into a state of melancholy.